Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Foxfyre wrote:

Well it's also obvious that you've never lived in Kansas or Texas or Oklahoma or New Mexico, places where they really know corn. In other words, when the corn harvest comes in here, it is field corn that most often shows up in the super markets because most of us prefer the larger ears and kernals and field corn just plain makes better roasting ears and a lot of us think it has a more pleasing texture and just plain tastes better. A fresh barrel of field corn roasting ears goes fast while the cellophane wrapped sweet corn goes begging in the produce department.

You are too precious Fox. Believe me. If you have ever tasted field corn you would know it isn't what they sell in the super markets.

I grew up on a farm and know the difference between the two. We planted corn every year. My brother still owns the farm and will be planting corn, field and sweet. Both are planted in a field by the way. He will get quite a kick out of your explanation of corn.

Farmers often plant one turn of the planter with sweet corn at the edge of a field. We did it all the time. Even cooked in sugar water, field corn is hard to eat. My mom did that one time when she picked from the wrong rows.

Those little ads at the top of the page which I guess subsidize us being able to run our mouths for free here on a2k, had this at the top of the page where we're talking about ethanol:

"Biomass Algae
The Aquatic Plant That Could Solve America's Fuel Crisis. New Report.
www.GreenChipStocks.com/Biomass_Rpt"

Whaddaya think? Ready to run your car on pond scum?

However pond scum is about as appealing to me as one of our locals who modified her VW beetle to run on used cooking oil and goes to McDonalds to fill up. I suppose she has been passing her bi-annual emissions tests though.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report


1. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has authored almost 70 peer-reviewed studies and won several awards. "First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!" Paldor told EPW on December 4, 2007. "Second, our ability to make realizable (or even sensible) future forecasts are greatly exaggerated relied upon by the IPCC. This is true both for the numerical modeling efforts (the same models that yield abysmal 3-day forecasts are greatly simplified and run for 100 years!)," Paldor explained. "Third, the rise in atmospheric CO2 is much smaller (by about 50%) than that expected from the anthropogenic activity (burning of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas), which implies that the missing amount of CO2 is (most probably) absorbed by the ocean. The oceanic response to increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere might be much slower than that of the atmosphere (and is presently very poorly understood). It is quite possible that after an ?'adjustment time' the ocean (which contains far more CO2 than the atmosphere) will simply increase its biological activity and absorb the CO2 from the atmosphere (i.e. the atmospheric CO2 concentration will decrease)," he added. "Fourth, the inventory of fossil fuels is fairly limited and in one generation we will run out of oil. Coal and natural gas might take 100-200 years but with no oil their consumption will increase so they probably won't last as long. The real alternative that presently available to humanity is nuclear power (that can easily produce electricity for domestic and industrial usage and for transportation when our vehicles are reverted to run on electricity). The technology for this exists today and can replace our dependence on fossil fuel in a decade! This has to be made known to the general public who is unaware of the alternative for taking action to lower the anthropogenic spewing of CO2. This transformation to nuclear energy will probably take place when oil reserves dwindle regardless of the CO2 situation," he wrote. Paldor also noted the pressure for scientists to bow to the UN IPCC view of climate change. "Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public media," he concluded.

Almost any stuff when burned produces CO2.

The process of gathering/treating/compressing stuff to burn also produces CO2.

WHO: Climate Change Threatens Millions
By HRVOJE HRANJSKI - 5 hours ago

MANILA, Philippines (AP) ?- Millions of people could face poverty, disease and hunger as a result of rising temperatures and changing rainfall expected to hit poor countries the hardest, the World Health Organization warned Monday.

Malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition and floods cause an estimated 150,000 deaths annually, with Asia accounting for more than half, said regional WHO Director Shigeru Omi.

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes represent the clearest sign that global warming has begun to impact human health, he said, adding they are now found in cooler climates such as South Korea and the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Warmer weather means that mosquitoes' breeding cycles are shortening, allowing them to multiply at a much faster rate, posing an even greater threat of disease, he told reporters in Manila.

The exceptionally high number cases in Asia of dengue fever, which is also spread by mosquitoes, could be due to rising temperatures and rainfall, but Omi said more study is needed to establish the connection between climate change and that disease.

"Without urgent action through changes in human lifestyle, the effects of this phenomenon on the global climate system could be abrupt or even irreversible, sparing no country and causing more frequent and more intense heat waves, rain storms, tropical cyclones and surges in sea level," he said.

In the Marshall Islands and South Pacific island nations, rising sea levels have already penetrated low-lying areas, submerging arable land and causing migrations to New Zealand or Australia, he said.

Omi said poorer countries with meager resources and weak health systems will be hit hardest because malnutrition is already widespread, with the young, women and the elderly at particular risk.

He said unusual, unexpected climate patterns ?- too much rain or too little ?- will have an impact on food production, especially irrigated crops such as rice, and can cause unemployment, economic upheavals and political unrest.

Dr. John Ehrenberg, WHO adviser on malaria and other parasitic diseases, said unchecked human development has contributed to the problem. That includes deforestation and an unprecedented level of human migration. As people move, so do diseases.

Omi said governments need to strengthen current systems providing clean water, immunizations, disease surveillance, mosquito control and disaster preparedness.

On the Net:
Western Pacific regional WHO site: http://www.wpro.who.int

ican711nm wrote:

Almost any stuff when burned produces CO2.

The process of gathering/treating/compressing stuff to burn also produces CO2.

You mean the idea to run all the cars, trucks, planes, ships, trains, and other stuff on cooking oil will pollute the planet with more CO2, leading us all to die of heat stroke, or just as bad - drown from melting glaciers and rising oceans? There for a while, I thought that idea could save the planet.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

2. Dr. Denis G. Rancourt, Professor of Physics and an Environmental Science researcher at the University of Ottawa, believes the global warming campaigns do a disservice to the environmental movement. "Promoting the global warming myth trains people to accept unverified, remote, and abstract dangers in the place of true problems that they can discover for themselves by becoming directly engaged in their workplace and by doing their own research and observations. It trains people to think lifestyle choices (in relation to CO2 emission) rather than to think activism in the sense of exerting an influence to change societal structures," Rancourt wrote in a February 27, 2007 blog post. Rancourt believes that global warming "will not become humankind's greatest threat until the sun has its next hiccup in a billion years or more (in the very unlikely scenario that we are still around,)" and noted that even if C02 emissions were a grave threat, "government action and political will cannot measurably or significantly ameliorate global climate in the present world." Rancourt believes environmentalists have been duped into promoting global warming as a crisis. "I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized," Rancourt wrote. Rancourt also questioned the whole concept of a global average temperature, noting, "Averaging problems aside, many tenuous approximations must be made in order to arrive at any of the reported final global average temperature curves." He further explained: "This means that determining an average of a quantity (Earth surface temperature) that is everywhere different and continuously changing with time at every point, using measurements at discrete times and places (weather stations), is virtually impossible; in that the resulting number is highly sensitive to the chosen extrapolation method(s) needed to calculate (or rather approximate) the average." "The estimates are uncertain and can change the calculated global warming by as much as 0.5 C, thereby removing the originally reported effect entirely," he added. Finally, Rancourt asserted that in a warm world, life prospers. "There is no known case of a sustained warming alone having negatively impacted an entire population," he said, adding, "As a general rule, all life on Earth does better when it's hotter: Compare ecological diversity and biotic density (or biomass) at the poles and at the equator." Rancourt added, "Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middle class."

It will probably be illegal to mow the grass, icann, so not to worry.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

3. Czech-born U.S. climatologist Dr. George Kukla, a research scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University expressed climate skepticism in 2007. "The only thing to worry about is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid," Kukla told Gelf Magazine on April 24, 2007. "What I think is this: Man is responsible for a PART of global warming. MOST of it is still natural," Kukla explained. (LINK) Kukla "said that the accelerating warming of the Earth is not caused by man but by the regularities of the planets' circulation around the Sun," according to a June 4, 2007 article in the Prague Monitor. "The changes in the Earth's circulation around the Sun are now extremely slow. Moreover, they are partially being compensated by the human impact on the climate. I think we will know more in about 50 years," Kukla said. Kukla is viewed as a pioneer in the study of solar forcing of climate changes.

Ontario doctors warn of climate-change consequences
The Canadian Press

April 7, 2008 at 12:17 PM EDT

TORONTO ?- Too many people only consider the environmental impacts of global warming and don't realize public health is at serious risk as well, the Ontario College of Family Physicians said Monday as it added its voice to the chorus of climate change concern.

The effects of climate change could bring on a new onslaught of health problems nationwide and even small incremental rises in temperatures could have a "profound effect" on public health, the review suggests.

"When we think about climate change we typically think about how it will affect our environment, but we need to start thinking about how it affects our health too," said college president Dr. Renee Arnold.

"The negative health effects of climate change are profound, and will be irreversible if we don't get our act together now and stop damaging our environment."

The review, which the college calls the most comprehensive of its kind worldwide, states there's already evidence that abnormal heat waves can trigger public health crises.

A two-week heat wave in France in 2003 is cited as one startling example, when about 15,000 people died prematurely as the country was struck by intense heat.

The report also envisions a future where Canadians commonly return home from Caribbean vacations with malaria or dengue fever, and warns the medical community will need to be prepared to deal with conditions they've never dealt with before.

Warmer weather would also allow ticks that carry Lyme disease to survive in areas where they couldn't before; if left untreated, Lyme disease can cause chronic arthritis and neurological symptoms.
(lyme disease carrying ticks were already found in the thousand islands and along eastern lake ontario last year)

Public health units could also be faced with more cases of the West Nile virus, which can cause meningitis, encephalitis and a polio-like syndrome.
(west nile virus arrived in ontario several years ago and is beginning to spread across canada)

The American Public Health Association raised similar concerns about climate change last week and said its effects on the public could be one of the top challenges facing the health community.